Die Another Day...

[fajrdrako]

I hadn't seen this, the latest of the James Bond movies. So we watched it after dinner.

A few comments:

• Pierce Brosnan has aged an awful lot since I last saw him. Well, haven't we all. I always think of him as he was in the Remington Steele days. He has a great body, and it was fun seeing him all hirsute and ragged. (Evocation of Aragorn and Wolverine.)




• Halle Berry is great to look at but I see so little personality there that I can't really enjoy looking at her. She had a little more oomph this time than as Storm, but... not much. To my ears, this woman always sounds as if she's reading her lines off a cue card. Is that just her normal diction? She won an Oscar, she must have talent. I just find it hard to see.



• I very much like Toby Stephens as the villain Gustav Graves. I often like Bond villains. (Robert Carlyle springs to mind, and Alan Cumming.)


• Numerous things made me think of scenes and items from comic books. The one-man flight thingummies were like the Legion of Super-Heroes used to have; the electric glove of the villain (with its purple lightning), the transformer-like armour, the exchange of DNA/looks/bodies, the ice palace (like the fortress of Solitude), and so on.... Of course, this was a good thing.



• It didn't seem so exotic this time: the settings (Iceland, Korea) were irrelevant and the only one with landmarks was London. I love that mysterious wall in the Embankment!



• Loved the final scene with Miss Moneypenny.


• As usual, I loved Judi Dench as M and John Cleese as Q.

Comments

[katkim.livejournal.com]

For some reason I loved the fencing scene, although a lot of people I've chatted to dislike it, thinking it's overblown and too staged. I don't know, I thought it was incredible (and very hot). I agree that it could have done without Madonna though.

[blackbyrde.livejournal.com]

Sean Connery will always be my favourite Bond. But Pierce Brosnan is second, though he is getting tired of the whole thing. Isn't this his last Bond movie?

I'm not a big fan of Halle Berry. I did like the other woman, the rogue agent, I forget her name (Miranda Frost, was it? - sounds comic book-like). The Korean general (the father) was funny - funny because I recognize him from Chinese TV and movies, and his Korean was badly accented. Heh.

Bonds...

[laitosto.livejournal.com]

Roger Moore is 76 today. I grew up watching him as jb, so he is sort of planted in my head as the definitive jb. I think Sean Connery is the best actor of the bunch for my money.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I liked that too, but then, I always like fencing scenes. (Lionel and Lex are just fine. Or Methos and... anyone.) OVerblown? Wasn't that the whole point - that Graves' life was as grandiose as his attitude? I liked that.

I thought Madonna was okay. I didn't actually recognize her - yeah, I'm slow sometimes - and my friends pointed her out to me. Another quirky female in a Bond movie. I can live with that. I actually thought it was kind of cool that she was there: as if she valued the genre or series enough to participate.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Sean Connery is a legend unto himself. Much as I like and admire him, my favourite Bond is probably Brosnan or Dalton. That being said, I think Brosnan is getting a little too old for the role already.

Miranda Frost - wonder if she's a relative of Emma? (g)

A Chinese accent in Korean? Heh. Figures. It's like those weird-sounding Frenchmen in American shows - only worse.

Re: Bonds...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I always thought Roger Moore made Bond too much of a comic, and the movies he was in were a little more camp than the others. Mind you, I liked them at the time. There's something about Bond that always appeals to me.